Sunday, February 26, 2012

Starting Patch 2. . .

The second patch is the largest area--again, while I only need to patch a smaller area I like having a wide margin around rust.

First, though, I have a nice steering wheel that I don't want to get goobered up with splatter from the welding. So it had to go.

Wheel gone! Rust holes visible to the left.

Of course it wasn't as easy as that--I do happen to own a wheel puller, but unfortunately, it wouldn't fit the narrow distance between the mounting points on the Studebaker wheel. So off to the parts store to rent one. After having the proper tool in hand, the job only took 3 minutes.

Once the wheel was out of the way, removing one bolt on the bottom of the column and disconnecting the shift linkage allowed for removal of the outer shell of the steering column.

Does that look like something to bump your head against?

To remove the steering post requires removing the steering box. Unfortunately, I didn't have a joint separator that fit, so that will have to wait until later. For now at least I won't be damaging a potentially expensive part, and, so far, I haven't bumped my head on it. Hopefully I'll be able to get the right tool so I can get that out of the way before that happens.

On to the floor. I got the area cut out using a cut off wheel on my angle grinder. This one was a bit trickier because the floor is spot welded to the brace, so I had to locate and grind through them. Once that was done, I cleaned up the surface rust with a wire brush and coated it with a rust converter so it wouldn't continue to rust.

If that brace weren't there, I'd have a one-legged Flintstone's car!

I discovered some good news: the cross brace was in excellent condition. And, surprisingly, no rust on the rocker panel.